What if you could sit down with some of the most talented security engineers in the world and ask any network security question you wanted? Security Power Tools lets you do exactly that! Members of Juniper Networks' Security Engineering team and a few guest experts reveal how to use, tweak, and push the most popular network security applications, utilities, and tools available using Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and Unix platforms.

Designed to be browsed, Security Power Tools offers you multiple approaches to network security via 23 cross-referenced chapters that review the best security tools on the planet for both black hat techniques and white hat defense tactics. It's a must-have reference for network administrators, engineers and consultants with tips, tricks, and how-to advice for an assortment of freeware and commercial tools, ranging from intermediate level command-line operations to advanced programming of self-hiding exploits.

Security Power Tools details best practices for:

Reconnaissance -- including tools for network scanning such as nmap; vulnerability scanning tools for Windows and Linux; LAN reconnaissance; tools to help with wireless reconnaissance; and custom packet generation

Penetration -- such as the Metasploit framework for automated penetration of remote computers; tools to find wireless networks; exploitation framework applications; and tricks and tools to manipulate shellcodes

Control -- including the configuration of several tools for use as backdoors; and a review of known rootkits for Windows and Linux

Monitoring -- such as tools to capture, and analyze packets; network monitoring with Honeyd and snort; and host monitoring of production servers for file changes

Discovery -- including The Forensic Toolkit, SysInternals and other popular forensic tools; application fuzzer and fuzzing techniques; and the art of binary reverse engineering using tools like Interactive Disassembler and Ollydbg

A practical and timely network security ethics chapter written by a Stanford University professor of law completes the suite of topics and makes this book a goldmine of security information. Save yourself a ton of headaches and be prepared for any network security dilemma with Security Power Tools.

Legal and Ethics

Chapter 1 Legal and Ethics Issues

Core Issues

Computer Trespass Laws: No "Hacking" Allowed

Reverse Engineering

Vulnerability Reporting

What to Do from Now On

Reconnaissance

Chapter 2 Network Scanning

How Scanners Work

Superuser Privileges

Three Network Scanners to Consider

Host Discovery

Port Scanning

Specifying Custom Ports

Specifying Targets to Scan

Different Scan Types

Tuning the Scan Speed

Application Fingerprinting

Operating System Detection

Saving Nmap Output

Resuming Nmap Scans

Avoiding Detection

Conclusion

Chapter 3 Vulnerability Scanning

Nessus

Nikto

WebInspect

Chapter 4 LAN Reconnaissance

Mapping the LAN

Using ettercap and arpspoof on a Switched Network

Dealing with Static ARP Tables

Getting Information from the LAN

Manipulating Packet Data

Chapter 5 Wireless Reconnaissance

Get the Right Wardriving Gear

802.11 Network Basics

802.11 Frames

How Wireless Discovery Tools Work

Netstumbler

Kismet at a Glance

Using Kismet

Sorting the Kismet Network List

Using Network Groups with Kismet

Using Kismet to Find Networks by Probe Requests

Kismet GPS Support Using gpsd

Looking Closer at Traffic with Kismet

Capturing Packets and Decrypting Traffic with Kismet

Wireshark at a Glance

Using Wireshark

AirDefense Mobile I was a founding employee of AirDefense, Inc. I wrote a considerable portion of AirDefense Mobile's core engine, and while I no longer work for AirDefense, Inc., I remain a shareholder.

Bryan Burns

Bryan Burns is the technical editor and general project leader of this book. He is the Chief Security Architect for Juniper Networks with more than a decade of experience in the security networking field and with numerous posts at leading network security companies.All other contributors are security engineers and researchers working at Juniper Networks in various posts both in the security network lab and in the field.

Dave Killion

Dave Killion (NSCA, NSCP) is a senior security research engineer with Juniper Networks, Inc. Formerly with the U.S. Army's Information Operations Task Force as an Information Warfare Specialist, he currently researches, develops, and releases signatures for the NetScreen Deep Inspection and Intrusion Detection and Prevention platforms. Dave has also presented at several security conventions including DefCon and ToorCon, with a proof-of-concept network monitoring evasion device in affiliation with several local security interest groups that he helped form. Dave lives south of Silicon Valley with his wife Dawn and two children, Rebecca and Justin.

Nicolas Beauchesne

Eric Moret

Eric Moret is originally from France and lives with his wife and two children in the San Francisco Bay Area. He obtained his Masters degree in Computer Sciences in 1997. He currently works at Juniper Networks where he manages a team dedicated to testing and releasing network protocol decoders for security appliance products. In addition to writing he enjoys traveling the world, photography and, depending on the season, snow boarding the Sierra Nevada or scuba diving Mexican caves.

Julien Sobrier

Julien Sobrier is a network security engineer at Zscaler. He works on the web security in the cloud. He was previously working for Juniper Networks. His experience was on the Intrusion Detection and Preventions systems. He is also the creator of http://safe.mn/, a URL shortener focused on security.

Philippe Biondi

Jennifer Stisa Granick

Jennifer Stisa Granick is the Civil Liberties Director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Before EFF, Granick was a Lecturer in Law and Executive Director of the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School where she taught Cyberlaw and Computer Crime Law. She practices in the full spectrum of Internet law issues including computer crime and security, national security, constitutional rights, and electronic surveillance, areas in which her expertise is recognized nationally.

Before teaching at Stanford, Jennifer spent almost a decade practicing criminal defense law in California. She was selected by Information Security magazine in 2003 as one of 20 "Women of Vision" in the computer security field. She earned her law degree from University of California, Hastings College of the Law and her undergraduate degree from the New College of the University of South Florida.

Steve Manzuik

Steve Manzuik has more than 13 thirteen years of experience in the information technology and security industry. Steve founded and was the technical lead for Entrench Technologies. Prior to Entrench, Mr. Manzuik was a manager in Ernst & Young's Security & Technology Solutions practice. Steve co-authored Hack Proofing Your Network, Second Edition (Syngress, 1928994709).

The image on the cover of Security Power Tools is a rotary hammer. This tool, also known as a hammer drill, is used for drilling into stone or concrete. It employs a rotating hammering motion that allows it to dig holes into the stone quickly with minimal effort. It can also work at low speeds for chiseling work and for restrained, more precise cutting.The cover image is a photograph taken by Frank Deras. The cover font is Adobe ITC Garamond. The text font is Linotype Birka; the heading font is Adobe Helvetica Neue Condensed; and the code font is LucasFont's TheSans Mono Condensed.

This book covers most of the stuff you will need to have a good idea about server,PC and network security.Especially good topics related to network scanning with nmap ,metasploit and wireless security.

I think it would great if they added more topics on how to set up a firewall.But overall I used it for systems work that I do and also for some of my security classes.It will have everything from beginning from basic security to network monitoring and other complex issues.

In terms of readability it was good because I am new to security and I didn't have any problems reading and understanding it.I definitely recommend for any CS majors or sys admins.

This is a detailed overview of tools that can be used to detect and defend against various security threats. The book generally groups software by category, with a section/chapter devoted to each tool. The software tool is thoroughly covered from download to installation to configuration. A fair amount of theory is covered for the various attack vectors discuss but the book focuses on practical, real-world examples.

The topics covered vary across a wide range but each is still covered with a good amount of depth which accounts for the books large size (856 pages). For each threat model covered, various tools that can be used for detection, avoidance, and protection are discussed along with user guides on how to acquire and set up the tools. The software discussed is generally open source and free of charge. Packages for all major PC operating systems are covered. Linux and Windows get the lion's share of attention but Mac and Unix are covered as well. Of course most of the Linux tools are Unix tools as well. Many of the Windows tools talked about are Linux ports.

I enjoyed the book overall and in particular I enjoyed the ability to "follow along" by downloading and working with the software packages covered in each section. Security professionals and hobbyist will certainly recognize many of the tools but a few might be new to many and even on the popular tools, some interesting features might not be know to all.

Summary:

- Practical explanations of each security topic are given for real world use.

Security Power Tools (SPT) is O'Reilly Publishing's sister manual to their popular Unix Power Tools. It is written as a primer to various security tools, organized within seven sections, covering Legal and Ethics, Reconnaissance, Penetration, Control, Defense, Monitoring, and Discovery. While the target audience of SPT is security professionals, the book weighs in at just over 800 pages and probably has something for everyone working in a technical facet of IT.

Having said that, I really enjoyed reading this book. I read it nearly cover-to-cover, and while I was at least familiar with most of the material in the book, I was still able to find gems of knowledge, even in tools that I work with on a daily basis. Expect to read about some tools that you may already know about, like Nmap, Nessus, and The Metasploit Framework, but keep reading for a heap of other useful applications that you may not be familiar with.

One of the strengths of the book is the varying backgrounds of its contributing authors; just as the book covers a diverse tool set, the expertise of the authors is also diverse. The book was written collaboratively by twelve individuals, made up primarily of Juniper Networks' J-Security team. Despite an opportunity for vendor-bias towards Juniper products, the book remained vendor-neutral. The majority of the book focuses on open-source and free-ware applications, although there is commercial software covered as well. In fact, Chapter 9 - Exploitation Framework Applications covers Canvas and Core Impact exclusively; both commercial applications.

One of the chapters that makes this book unique is the chapter on Law and Ethics, written by Jennifer Stisa Granick. You may recognize Ms Granick from her representation of Michael Lynn in during the Cisco Gate ordeal at Black Hat 2005 (coincidentally, Michael Lynn is also one of the contributing authors of this book). She provides an insightful discussion on not only the legal implications of security work, but also the role that ethics plays in some of those "gray" areas that security professionals may find themselves in.

Another chapter that sets this book apart is Chapter 6 - Custom Packet Generation, which primarily focuses on the use of Scapy. The chapter is written by Phillipe Biondi, the author of Scapy, and he provides an excellent argument to "Decode, Do Not Interpret". He discusses the advantages of writing tools that will provide you with raw decoded information, without an interpretation of that information. For instance, if you scanned a port on a remote host, Biondi would argue that it would be better for your tool to tell you that the remote host returned a RST packet rather than telling you that the port is closed. Beyond this valuable discussion, Biondi provides a very thorough discussion of the uses of Scapy, along with several good examples. This chapter alone makes this book worth buying.

While I liked this book, there were also some problems that prevented me from giving it a 5-star rating. For starters, the preface describes the overwhelming amount of content that was edited out of this book to keep it within size constraints, yet there was quite a bit of content that detracted from the value-density of the book. As I mentioned previously, the majority of SPT is a security primer and should not be considered a reference. Given this position, I believe that there was too much step-by-step installation and setup content. As an example, Chapter 16 - E-Mail Security and Anti-Spam covered the installation and management of the Norton Anti-Virus client. I can appreciate the security-related value of anti-virus software, but I felt that a step-by-step walk through of a Norton product was irrelevant.

Additionally, while I previously stated that the diverse expertise of the authors was a benefit, the varied writing style detracted from the readability of the book. Content aside, I found some chapters to be fun to read while others were boring, due to a particular author's writing style.

In summary, I would recommend this book to anyone interested in an overview of where to get started in researching security tools for a particular purpose. While none of the discussions in the book are exhaustive, they will definitely get you started and arm you with enough information to know what you want and where to get it.